Gillyflower Read online

  There was no denying, however, how completely I had fallen for her, how the need had sprung up even before we kissed. I suppose it was while we were talking in the park that I really fell, while we walked and talked in circles about the “coincidences” of the dream, the play, and her picture. We were like two souls removed from time, cast out on some damp and foggy planet to question the universe—its possibilities and its terrible rules. Talking with her then had given me the same feeling I’d had when our eyes locked in the theater that day, only without the fury. Our discussion—our every attention—was so focused on ourselves and our mysteries that there was nothing to do but dream we might—for an instant, at least—become one person.

  And I had thought not a whit beyond that, it’s true. I suspect that neither had she, and had I not created the opportunity for her to be alone in the bathroom, had we stayed together until we inevitably reached the bed, she would have been there with me still. I had, in my inimitable way, screwed everything up in the end. Probably, I thought, I could have convinced her to stay and sleep with me anyway—when I was younger I might have tried it—but in Nora’s case I couldn’t have lived with that. I would have felt like a murderer.

  There was no use telling myself that her leaving was all for the best, that she’d go home and adjust to her life again and be kind to her (damn him!) husband, and that we would have made a sorry couple in the dreadful daylight of things, where our worlds would never have meshed, and where daily life could never have measured up to the pure exhilaration of our first meeting. I knew all that, and knew it to be all true, but it didn’t help one bit.

  Her last words echoed again and again in my head: “No right to become real for me,” she’d said—or something like it. What in the bloody hell was real, though? Not much, in my experience; not even my first name was real. (For some idiotic reason I began to feel sadder than ever when I realized I’d not told Nora my real first name is James.)

  And why had Nora accused me that way? She couldn’t have meant it. Perhaps she did, but I didn’t think so. And neither did I believe that I had really harmed her—no, even now I do not think I did. Neither of us was to blame. We were caught up in something, that’s all, something private and shining gold and incredibly true. At one point in the afternoon, when I looked at Nora, I felt as though all my life I’d been standing in a darkened room, and my eyes had only just then become accustomed to the dimness, able to make out the shape of her, standing next to me all the time. If I would always miss her, I’d simply have to miss her—wasn’t it better than never having known her at all? She’d given me back my youth and my interest in living; she’d given me mysteries to love and memories to dwell on, and one of the most tantalizing physical urges of my life—all the more precious for its unfulfillment. I was overwhelmed by my gratitude to her; I would use all this in my art. I wanted to give her something, something grand.

  Which, I realized suddenly, was the impulse behind the object that had set this whole thing off: Nora’s letter. I knew exactly where it was, and I thought, sentimentally (remember, I was quite drunk), of the words of a maudlin old song: “They can’t take that away from me.” And the drawing! I would always have the drawing Nora had made. I was luckier than she, poor duck, who’d gone away with nothing but a pair of enormous blue gloves. That thought made me laugh—how charmingly like her. Perhaps she would dust her books with them. Funny little witch.

  My mind, too sick to walk a straight line, continued to wander.

  I must have fallen asleep after a while, because the next thing I knew, Leon was hovering over me, holding his nose with one hand, slapping my cheek with the other, and saying, “Hugh, wake up, wake up,” in a rasping, nasal voice.

  I opened my eyes slightly. My head was immense. My tongue felt as if I had lowered it into a bowl of fiery salt.

  “What do you want?” I growled.

  Leon collapsed on the bed and sat there, breathing hard. “Good Lord, Hugh, I thought you were dead this time. I really couldn’t wake you.”

  “Rubbish,” I said. “As you can see, I’m quite awake.”

  “And naked, damp, and smelling like a barroom sink,” he said, getting up and straightening the covers. “And smeared with cracker crumbs. . . and what on earth . . .?” he asked, just then spotting the flood on the floor.

  “Nothing serious, Leon, an uncharted body of water, that’s all,” I said. “You can call for someone to mop it up someday.” I turned over. “There’s a good fellow.” I realized the granite object I’d smacked my head upon was the pillow. I remembered Nora. I wanted to be unconscious again.

  But Leon wouldn’t let me. He drew back the drapes and I wailed at the brightness. It was morning. The sun, blast it, was burning away busily over Boston. I sat up. My back had a cutlass stuck in it, and it was slicing its way up from my waist toward my lungs and heart, making it painful to breathe. I imagined that soon it would lash into my old sutures and unleash a torrent of blood that would drown both Leon and me. I waited patiently for that to happen.

  “And did you have a nice time with Miss Forrest?” Leon said, looking about the room for signs of her and barely masking his relief at not finding any.

  “Oh, yes, I did indeed.” I tried to smile at him brightly, but my face was paralyzed and far away. I could not seem to reach it, even with my hand. The voice I was using must have originated with some unseen ventriloquist in the room.

  To my astonishment, Leon handed me a cup of coffee. “I don’t approve,” he said, “but in one hour we have a plane to catch. You know you have a performance tonight.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” I moaned. The punishment simply did not fit the crime.

  “You’ll have to shave and shower,” Leon told me, and pulled off all the covers.

  I looked down at my body: a vast, lumpish fish, possibly a sturgeon. I prodded at my ribs with a finger, to see if they’d give, but they were still surprisingly solid. Leon pushed me into The Robe, put my slippers on my feet, handed me the coffee cup, and led me to the bathroom, where he arranged my shaving things and sat down to make sure I used them.

  “Really, Hugh,” he grumbled. “Really, I’ve never seen such a mess. You didn’t even drain the tub.” He did so then, and when I’d finished shaving, he put me into the shower, where I rubbed away more of my skin.

  I felt a little better when I was dressed, and I asked Leon for more coffee, which he allowed me. He called for the car and went about gathering my things. I sat down carefully on the sofa, exactly where Nora had sat. I selected the spot for that reason. My heart was giving me a little trouble. It had a secret to protect.

  “Leon, do you know about gillyflowers?” I knew he would. Leon loved gardens, knew things about buds and bugs and trees that often amazed me. He’d grown up under a wheelbarrow, I believed.

  “What do you mean ‘know about’ them? Do you want a description?” Leon never seemed surprised by any inquiry of mine.

  “I mean, I know what they are, but do you know anything strange about them, or. . . are there any legends surrounding them, or. . . ?” I depended on him to fill me in, though I didn’t know what I was seeking.

  “No particular legend that I know of. They’re pretty little things, not all that common anymore. Part of the carnation family, I believe, although they grow quite wild. Some years ago I saw some when we were in Ireland. Lovely deep purply-pinkish color, like cows clover, you might say.”

  I looked at him. “They’re yellow,” I said. “A very pale shade.”

  “No, no,” he countered, “for the most part they’re pinkish-purple, or very rarely white, but come to think of it I believe I have heard of yellow gillyflowers, though I’ve never seen one. Expect they’re rather rare.”

  “I’ve seen one, Leon. I saw one yesterday.”

  Leon was greatly pleased with me; he looked at me with a priceless affection in his baggy, doggy eyes. Not only was I offering no resistance to returning to New York, but I was engaging him in sensible, civi
lized conversation on one of his favorite topics.

  “Really, Hugh, how nice! Did you find a botanical museum? You couldn’t have seen it growing wild?”

  “Quite wild, Leon. And quite lovely as well. My mother used to tell us we oughtn’t pick them, so I didn’t, but I wanted to tell you about it—I knew it would interest you.”

  “Yes, it is interesting. And you saw it growing wild. . . in Boston?”

  I noted a touch of reluctant disbelief in his voice, like a child suspicious of Santa, but not willing to be disenchanted just yet. “There was a special place in the park.” I checked his face for signs of guilt, but he gave no sign of being flustered. Mere life experience, I thought, without a lick of deliberate study, has made of this Leon an actor greater than I. Not only had he failed to betray his presence in the park the previous afternoon, he had not shown his disappointment at having missed what would have been to him a genuine treat of nature. Suddenly I felt sorry for tormenting him.

  The call came that our car was waiting. We gathered our things and started out the door.I put my arm around Leon and kissed him on the cheek.

  “You bloody fool,” he said as we left the suite. “Don’t start acting up now—we’re in a hurry.”

  I turned for a moment and saw Nora curled up on the sofa. My heart stopped and started. She lifted a blue-gloved hand; it looked like a blessing. Leon gave me a little shove, and then he locked the door behind us.

  Acknowledgments

  My most affectionate thanks to Early James and my other first readers for their enthusiastic appraisal of and insightful comments on this manuscript.

  And to Carey Reid, as always, for his love and unquestioning support in the face of my many mysteries.

  About the Author

  Diane Wald was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and has lived in Massachusetts since 1972. She holds a BA from Montclair State University and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has published more than 250 poems in literary magazines since 1966. She was the recipient of a two-year fellowship in poetry from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and has been awarded the Grolier Poetry Prize, The Denny Award, The Open Voice Award, and the Anne Halley Award. She also received a grant from the Artists Foundation (Massachusetts Council on the Arts). She has published four chapbooks (Target of Roses from Grande Ronde Press, My Hat That Was Dreaming from White Fields Press, Double Mirror from Runaway Spoon Press, and Faustinetta, Gegenschein, Trapunto from Cervena Barva Press), and won the Green Lake Chapbook Award from Owl Creek Press. Her electronic chapbook (Improvisations on Titles of Works by Jean Dubuffet) appears on the Mudlark website. Her book Lucid Suitcase was published by Red Hen Press in 1999 and her second book, The Yellow Hotel, was published by Verse Press in the fall of 2002. WONDERBENDER, her third collection, was published by 1913 Press in 2011. She lives outside of Boston with her husband, Carey Reid, and their charismatic cats.

  Author photo © P. Carey Reid

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